This is a good move in the right direction and will put PUGs back in the Game
The Fails didn't improve challenge in private matchs anyway just shut down the Pugs
Well done cryptic Well done
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
The game simply doesn't educate the average player enough to do it without consulting external resources. That is what really needs to change. I want to see every player doing well, not objectives being changed so they can win by doing poorly.
One concern I have for this specific queue is the random nature of the point level enemies that spawn. The "RNG" aspect of this game is one of it's absolute weakest components... How many times do you expect that (10) 1 point ships will spawn consecutively versus (2) 5 point ships? In theory a 5 point ship should take proportionately longer than freeing a 1 point ship but I'm not sure in practice that applies if your tactics involve TBR'ign the enemies 10k from the ship to free, for example. I've had quite a few runs where I never saw a ship higher than 3 spawn as well.
Perhaps rather than randomly generating ships, they could be generated in sequence... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5? Or 111, 222, 333, 444, 555 something that would provide consistency to the mission and make clearing the optionals less about getting a lucky ship spawn and more about skill/teamwork/DPS/etc.
I am a little confused by this Blog in one respect: Is the ONLY change happening tomorrow going to be a reworking of ANRA; or will *all* the advanced mandatory objections be switched over to optionals?
I.E. After maintenance tomorrow, will I be able to get a Craylon Gas in DRSA even if we don't rescue all 6 engineers; or will I still be able to get a BNP if a transformer gets healed in ISA?
Going to preface this by saying that everything except the bit I'm about to comment on I like. I'm simply not commenting on them because there isn't a whole lot to say. 'Good job', while nice to hear, isn't really very helpful as feedback.
The first major planned change we want to introduce is that all base rewards earned from a queue are the same across all difficulties. This means that if you earn 5 marks for rescuing 5 friendly NPCs on Normal difficulty then rescuing 5 friendly NPCs on Advanced difficulty will now reward you 5 marks as well (currently you are rewarded more for these actions in Advanced difficulty).
I see the theory behind this, but I think you need to factor in that doing 'X' on advanced is not the same as doing it on normal. The ships we have to fight are tougher, and there may be other factors as well, making it more difficult on higher difficulties (obviously, kind of the point). My point is that making it reward the same amount on the theory that it's the same job doesn't work, the actual effort involved is higher and so the reward should likewise be higher. Rescuing five ships in azure nebula for example, takes much less time on normal than on advanced.
While I think this is a good change for the health of the game, it saddens me that it's needed at all. It wasn't hard to not fail the required objectives on Advanced. No exceptional build or strategy was needed -- Azure is one example where simple strategization really mattered, though. The game simply doesn't educate the average player enough to do it without consulting external resources. That is what really needs to change. I want to see every player doing well, not objectives being changed so they can win by doing poorly.
Still, this was needed. No one wants to hear "it's your build that's the problem", no matter how true, and revitalizing the queues is only a good thing.
I agree with you 100% and have made a lot of posts asking for just this
I guess we need to post more and more about making a qualifying STF that mimics the desired STF to enter that every player has to complete solo before they can join the Q
Its a fact normals do not prepare the player for advanced and advanced's don't prepare players for elites
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
I like the proposed changes, but we need a more steady spawning of ships to rescue. To require 10 points for the optional when all that is spawning is T'liss warbirds is NOT reasonable. You have too much travel time between rescue points for that to be ok. Im not saying stack the deck by any means, but EVERY iteration of the queue should have an equal chance for optional success as every other iteration.
Huh, I honestly thought they'd never look twice at the redone Advanced queues with the squawking the DPSers do about touching it again.
I appreciate the attention to the obvious, i.e "This ain't working", Cryptic, I really do. It does make me a little more hopeful that I can eventually complete a few projects that require Advanced queue rewards (APCs, BNPs, etc). I'd rather do this & enjoy the game than fret over how to get higher DPS. I'm done with fretting over high DPS, it does not a fun game make.
Nyx, leaving the elites as is gives the DPSers their private sandbox. As long as no one goes into Advanced or Normal level queues and deliberately triggers AFK penalties on newer/undergeared players, it sounds like everyone finally gets what they want.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
I am a little confused by this Blog in one respect: Is the ONLY change happening tomorrow going to be a reworking of ANRA; or will *all* the advanced mandatory objections be switched over to optionals?
I.E. After maintenance tomorrow, will I be able to get a Craylon Gas in DRSA even if we don't rescue all 6 engineers; or will I still be able to get a BNP if a transformer gets healed in ISA?
It's just ANRA for now. They're using this STF to test out their ideas for how to tweak the difficulty arrangements and see what works and what doesn't, gauge the feedback, and basically use it to experiment with some of their ideas in the open game. Once they do that and if their ideas they're deploying here work, they'll expand it out into the rest of the game.
By doing just one STF, it's easier for them to modify the conditions and test them out than it would be to change everything.
I especially like though how they're being open about this, that this is an experiment in more ways than one. They want to not only try out some tweaks to how the Advanced difficulty setting works, but see if this is a viable way to test out ideas. This extends to how we interact with them and their experiment here. So far, I'm liking what I'm seeing here of people going "Huh, this sounds good so far, let's try it out."
If this works out, just as a way of the devs testing out ideas and tweaks to the game tables and math on us in limited conditions like this, this could be a big step forward to more transparency and a healthy dialogue. Optimistic, I admit, but here's hoping. It will require some patience on our part.
I love Star Trek and I love this game, but after a concerted effort to make a dent in my fav PvE, Cure Appied, I am convinced that the only players that can defeat the Elite level missions are obsessed or cheating.
I understand that this is a free to play game. I believe in this system and have spent significant money to contribute my part. My current load out is as follows:
Even with this rare and expensive equipment it is very difficult for me to kill even one assimilated bird of prey.
I cant spend more than an hour or so a day gaming and should not have to to have fun. I am an attorney an my life is stressful, my starship is my outlet. This is what I do for fun and it should be fun for how much I pay.
Please make some changes so that people with lives can still compete in the game. Otherwise I will take my time and money elsewhere.
The reward isn't the biggest problem, it's the fact that the Tholians have such high armor value, that it take forever to kill them on Advanced difficulty, even with a high DPS ship! You gotta fix what is broken first before braking it even more!
Oh, and the Benthan-part of Battle of Korfez still doesn't work. How about fixing that?
err.... you know.. 10 points.... please make sure the spawning code does not continuously spew out the 1 point bops... because i have had too many of those runs. One bop after the other....
just my guess. if u rng the ships that spawn after one another the approach per points may not is the right one imo.
how about a system that counts the number of ships rescued within a given time for the optional for this particular mission?
and just to have it thrown in: for others may just a timer like in the old stf's would be appropiate?
The reward isn't the biggest problem, it's the fact that the Tholians have such high armor value, that it take forever to kill them on Advanced difficulty, even with a high DPS ship! You gotta fix what is broken first before braking it even more!
Oh, and the Benthan-part of Battle of Korfez still doesn't work. How about fixing that?
if ur talking about azure, u don't need dps at all in there. tbr gw's, and some power under the hood on the other hand....
to note: been a while since i played azure :rolleyes:
This change looks really promising for reviving pugs on advanced mode so thanks to the Dev's for it as I've missed being able to take on Azure on advance without expecting a fail pug.
I do have to agree with comments from others though that the points numbers on the optionals could be a pain on some runs when the RNG spews out 1 and 2 point ships so you just can't physically get enough points in the time frame (we've all seem this I'm sure on several of these types of missions). However the fact that these will not fail the mission is at least a consolation (although I'm sure we'll see a few complaints from those affected regardless).
Now for those complaining this is dumbing these queues down can we get Elite versions of the queues that don't already have them please and then everyone will be happy.
Oh and cudos to the Dev's for rolling out this change to one mission to get a feel for the impact and gather feed back rather than just making wholesale changes across the board, much appreciated.
I salute this change! I've only ran this one 5 times since the Advanced mode started, but I've failed it 4 times despite almost solo rescuing 2 of the 3 ships each time.
The last run, I solo freed a 3 point ship and went to finish the requirement and found all 4 of my teammates working on a 1 star. Thanks Cryptic, this should renew my faith in you somewhat!
Why give people these loooooooong things to read when they arrive for the public missions for the first few times when new?
People are not going to wait for you to read this stuff and then complain you aren't doing anything because you want to make sure of what to do, rather than just blindly shooting at stuff.
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
This makes me very happy. I remember a time when the public queues were full, or at least that most had enough turnover that you could get your daily bonus marks:D. As we all know though, ever since the intro of "auto-fail" its been a real stuggle to efficiently get those marks when one's game time is limited. Hopefully this will begin to slowly turn the tide back to those times while still providing a decent challenge. So thank you Cryptic from one, now much happier, fan of STO.
As Zephram Cochrane once said, "That'll do, pig. That'll do." - April 1st 2015.
Where is Starfleet Dental at Nebrekki !!!! We need party poppers in here ASAP
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
So; I understand that with the changes to the Advanced Queue Changes; does this mean that The Hive Advanced (or Elite; if there's an Elite Version, don't remember) will be possibly beatable; instead of just theoretically beatable? Right now it's just completely overpowered; and to beat it you have to have the entire task force have the highest of tier gear; which is just ridiculous.
Thank you for working to start fixing these queues.
I do have one question though. Does this mean that all queues will start getting Elite options so that the Advance no longer need to be adjusted for Elite players, like the STFs have been?
If so, then this is a major change in the right direction for fixing some of the very many problems that came with DR.
I do look forward to see how this works, and if there are any other good changes that will be coming.
Leader of Elite Guardian Academy.Would you like to learn how to run a fleet? Would you like to know how to do ship builds (true budget as well as high end)?The join the Academy today!
So we've heard about marks in the blog, and elite marks. What about the RND boxes? If we get the same RND box in the new revamped queue as we get otherwise, nobody will do normal, they'll do advanced, get the box, and fail the optionals. This seems... counterintuitive. IMO if we do this change, failing the optional should just give you the normal box, not the advanced box.
Like, seriously, it is about time this issue was addressed. Some Advanced missions were failing so regularly that finding quality PUGs was a rarity. I have actually just allowed my rep projects to stall for lack of player groups that could succeed in advanced queue. Some Advanced missions seem almost impossible to win with non-premium gear and min-max characters. Cryptic, these changes will be welcomed and appreciated.
Comments
The Fails didn't improve challenge in private matchs anyway just shut down the Pugs
Well done cryptic Well done
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
This. SO MUCH this.
Let us upgrade the Seleya Ceremonial Lirpa and Kri'stak Blade
One concern I have for this specific queue is the random nature of the point level enemies that spawn. The "RNG" aspect of this game is one of it's absolute weakest components... How many times do you expect that (10) 1 point ships will spawn consecutively versus (2) 5 point ships? In theory a 5 point ship should take proportionately longer than freeing a 1 point ship but I'm not sure in practice that applies if your tactics involve TBR'ign the enemies 10k from the ship to free, for example. I've had quite a few runs where I never saw a ship higher than 3 spawn as well.
Perhaps rather than randomly generating ships, they could be generated in sequence... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5? Or 111, 222, 333, 444, 555 something that would provide consistency to the mission and make clearing the optionals less about getting a lucky ship spawn and more about skill/teamwork/DPS/etc.
Captain Ariel Trueheart Department of Temporal Investigations
U.S.S. Valkyrie - NCC 991701
=/\= ================================= =/\=
Only ANRA will change on the 26th.
I see the theory behind this, but I think you need to factor in that doing 'X' on advanced is not the same as doing it on normal. The ships we have to fight are tougher, and there may be other factors as well, making it more difficult on higher difficulties (obviously, kind of the point). My point is that making it reward the same amount on the theory that it's the same job doesn't work, the actual effort involved is higher and so the reward should likewise be higher. Rescuing five ships in azure nebula for example, takes much less time on normal than on advanced.
I agree with you 100% and have made a lot of posts asking for just this
I guess we need to post more and more about making a qualifying STF that mimics the desired STF to enter that every player has to complete solo before they can join the Q
Its a fact normals do not prepare the player for advanced and advanced's don't prepare players for elites
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
I appreciate the attention to the obvious, i.e "This ain't working", Cryptic, I really do. It does make me a little more hopeful that I can eventually complete a few projects that require Advanced queue rewards (APCs, BNPs, etc). I'd rather do this & enjoy the game than fret over how to get higher DPS. I'm done with fretting over high DPS, it does not a fun game make.
I wish "Normal" difficulty had a guaranteed 100% chance of getting 1 BNP or similar currency. With Advanced and Elite getting 2 and 3 respectively.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
:mad:
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
It's just ANRA for now. They're using this STF to test out their ideas for how to tweak the difficulty arrangements and see what works and what doesn't, gauge the feedback, and basically use it to experiment with some of their ideas in the open game. Once they do that and if their ideas they're deploying here work, they'll expand it out into the rest of the game.
By doing just one STF, it's easier for them to modify the conditions and test them out than it would be to change everything.
I especially like though how they're being open about this, that this is an experiment in more ways than one. They want to not only try out some tweaks to how the Advanced difficulty setting works, but see if this is a viable way to test out ideas. This extends to how we interact with them and their experiment here. So far, I'm liking what I'm seeing here of people going "Huh, this sounds good so far, let's try it out."
If this works out, just as a way of the devs testing out ideas and tweaks to the game tables and math on us in limited conditions like this, this could be a big step forward to more transparency and a healthy dialogue. Optimistic, I admit, but here's hoping. It will require some patience on our part.
This looks good at the surface.
I love Star Trek and I love this game, but after a concerted effort to make a dent in my fav PvE, Cure Appied, I am convinced that the only players that can defeat the Elite level missions are obsessed or cheating.
I understand that this is a free to play game. I believe in this system and have spent significant money to contribute my part. My current load out is as follows:
T5u Fleet Dreadnought Cuiser Venture Configuration
Phased Tetryon Beam Array Acc/DMg XIV
Phased Tetryon Beam Array Acc/Dmg XIV
Neutronic Torpedo Launcher XII
Dual Phased Tetryon Beam Array CrtD / DmgX2 MKXIII
Phased Tetryon Turret Acc/ DMG
Phased Tetryon Turret Dmg x2
Phased Tetryon Turret Crtd CrtH
Tetryon Pulse Generator XII x4
Ultra Rare Elite Scorpion Fighters
Even with this rare and expensive equipment it is very difficult for me to kill even one assimilated bird of prey.
I cant spend more than an hour or so a day gaming and should not have to to have fun. I am an attorney an my life is stressful, my starship is my outlet. This is what I do for fun and it should be fun for how much I pay.
Please make some changes so that people with lives can still compete in the game. Otherwise I will take my time and money elsewhere.
Multigeek aka James B. Reese III Esq.
Yeah, this was enough...
Oh, and the Benthan-part of Battle of Korfez still doesn't work. How about fixing that?
just my guess. if u rng the ships that spawn after one another the approach per points may not is the right one imo.
how about a system that counts the number of ships rescued within a given time for the optional for this particular mission?
and just to have it thrown in: for others may just a timer like in the old stf's would be appropiate?
if ur talking about azure, u don't need dps at all in there. tbr gw's, and some power under the hood on the other hand....
to note: been a while since i played azure
I do have to agree with comments from others though that the points numbers on the optionals could be a pain on some runs when the RNG spews out 1 and 2 point ships so you just can't physically get enough points in the time frame (we've all seem this I'm sure on several of these types of missions). However the fact that these will not fail the mission is at least a consolation (although I'm sure we'll see a few complaints from those affected regardless).
Now for those complaining this is dumbing these queues down can we get Elite versions of the queues that don't already have them please and then everyone will be happy.
Oh and cudos to the Dev's for rolling out this change to one mission to get a feel for the impact and gather feed back rather than just making wholesale changes across the board, much appreciated.
The last run, I solo freed a 3 point ship and went to finish the requirement and found all 4 of my teammates working on a 1 star. Thanks Cryptic, this should renew my faith in you somewhat!
People are not going to wait for you to read this stuff and then complain you aren't doing anything because you want to make sure of what to do, rather than just blindly shooting at stuff.
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
A step in the right direction
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
I do have one question though. Does this mean that all queues will start getting Elite options so that the Advance no longer need to be adjusted for Elite players, like the STFs have been?
If so, then this is a major change in the right direction for fixing some of the very many problems that came with DR.
I do look forward to see how this works, and if there are any other good changes that will be coming.
Like, seriously, it is about time this issue was addressed. Some Advanced missions were failing so regularly that finding quality PUGs was a rarity. I have actually just allowed my rep projects to stall for lack of player groups that could succeed in advanced queue. Some Advanced missions seem almost impossible to win with non-premium gear and min-max characters. Cryptic, these changes will be welcomed and appreciated.